NorthStar Visiting Scholars from Bemidji State University joined the weekly Rotary meeting this January to share why cultural exchange matters—especially now, when it’s easier than ever to learn about each other through screens, but harder than ever to truly know each other.

NorthStar Visiting Scholars Academy host university faculty from China to come to BSU to observe classes, engage in academic exchange, and experience cultural, social, historical and many aspects of Bemidji and Minnesota. By doing so, the academy creates a unique mutually beneficial experience for both the scholars as well as the university and its surrounding community.

The presentation opened with a martial arts demonstration that reminded attendees that some of the deepest forms of communication don’t need words.

Guests sampled mini spring rolls while learning about Spring Festival and 立春 (Lichun)—the beginning of spring, that moment when even in the depths of winter, Chinese tradition acknowledges that warmth is returning and underneath all the snow, new life is beginning.

Then the scholars shared their stories.

GUO Jianfei told the group about a little boy from a local family who was initially cautious around her. She described the moment everything changed—when he finally put down his guard and started to play, because she was no longer a stranger. From this personal experience, she discusses “the danger of a single story”—how when people only know one narrative about a place or its people, they mistake a fragment for the whole truth.

YANG Anran shared that she had only known about Indigenous people through history textbooks and screens—until she found that the back seat of a local van became her best “classroom.” She was referring to Conifer Transit, the door-to-door van service provided free transportation by the Headwaters Regional Development Commission (HRDC). In those rides, through casual conversations with drivers and fellow passengers, she learned what no textbook could teach her.

Program coordinator Jo Li framed the event by sharing her own journey into cultural exchange work—from hosting an American exchange student in Nanjing at age fifteen, to now coordinating the NorthStar Visiting Scholars Academy and BSU’s education abroad programs. She recalled her grandmother’s words before she left China: “The world has changed so much. Go see it for yourself.” Born in 1928, her grandmother had seen America as both adversary and ally through different chapters of history, yet chose to encourage connection over fear.

“This is what cultural exchange really is,” Jo told the group. “Not grand gestures or formal presentations, but spring rolls passed around a table”, which HE Zhimin has

made that same morning for the Rotary visit. The event highlighted how genuine cross-cultural understanding happens through the everyday moments when people sit beside each other—in living rooms, at community gatherings, and yes, in the back seats of local transit vans.

The NorthStar Visiting Scholars Academy continues to foster these connections, replacing fear with understanding and single stories with fuller, more human ones. BSU’s International Program Center also offers many education abroad opportunities for students to go see the world while earning credits towards their degree programs.